


fantasy will set you free

by aces



Category: Doctor Who: Eighth Doctor Adventures - Various Authors
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-08
Updated: 2010-05-08
Packaged: 2020-10-06 02:28:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20499371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aces/pseuds/aces
Summary: When did it stop being a new adventure every day?





	fantasy will set you free

**Author's Note:**

> Written for ionlylurkhere for the henriettastreet ficathon. Takes place after _The Gallifrey Chronicles_, though is only generally spoilery for the books as a whole. Title comes from the song “Magic Carpet Ride.” I’m terribly sorry for writing such a downer of a fic, by the way; I feel like a ficathon gift should be happy! and roses! and puppies! and, er, that didn’t happen here. Actually, that doesn’t happen in most of my ficathon gifts. Hmm.

“That,” Fitz said after slouching around the bookcase and spotting the beautiful woman browsing the shelves, “is a fabulous book.”

She glanced down at the one in her hands. “Is it?” She didn’t sound all that interested, and her attention was already drifting back to the books on the shelf. “Oh good.”

“Great author,” Fitz went on, leaning casually against the bookcase. “Really knows his stuff.”

She raised her eyebrows and looked at him again. “_Her_ stuff, surely?”

“What?” Fitz straightened. “She’s a woman? Really?”

Despite herself, perhaps, the woman’s lips quirked upward in what might have been a distant cousin to a derisive smile. “Still knows her stuff, does she?”

“Oh yeah.” Fitz managed charmingly abashed with some finesse. “More than I do, obviously.”

The distant cousin became a closer relation, and a little less derisive, and Fitz’s heart did a strange flipflop as it simultaneously tried to slow down in relief and pick up speed in anticipation. “Fitz,” he said while still feeling bold, sticking his hand out.

“Alicia,” she said without batting an eyelash, and shook his hand. Her grip was firm, her skin cool. “Do you often try to pull women in bookstores, Fitz?”

Fitz shrugged. “You sometimes get a different clientele than you would from the bars,” he said, taking the opportunity to lean in confidentially.

“Ahh,” Alicia said, angling herself just a little forward too. “Not going to take the ‘I prefer intellectuals’ line, then?”

“I like to think that reading is not for intellectuals alone,” Fitz replied with dignity, and that earned him another raised eyebrow and another flicker of a smile. “Besides which, you’ve obviously already figured out I’m not one myself.”

“It takes a brave man to admit that,” she conceded with her widest smile yet, and Fitz’s heart did that strange little flipflop again.

He nodded over to the café portion of the bookstore, which was pretty quiet at the moment.

“Can I buy you a coffee?” he suggested.

“That would be lovely,” Alicia sighed, “but I see the Doctor beckoning, which probably means we need to get going in order to save the world before our twenty minutes are up.”

Fitz blinked, then twisted to look over his shoulder. He sighed, straightening up and shoving his hands in his pockets. “And I was doing so well, too,” he said.

“You really were,” Alicia—Trix—said, setting the book back on the shelf and taking his arm. They walked toward their friend, who was fidgeting with impatience. At least he was waiting for them; he had been known on occasion to bugger off and have to come back to fetch them. “Alicia was really enjoying herself.”

Sometimes—okay, a lot of the time—it creeped Fitz out, how Trix could talk about the personae she took up and dropped off with such ease, as if they really were entirely different people, not aspects out of her imagination. He didn’t really like this pretend-we’re-strangers game, not anymore they’d done it so often, but Trix was forever egging him on to play it again with her, swapping roles over who was the pursuer, who the pursued.

She always made him work for it. He tried to make her work for it too, but he almost always cracked first.

“Why can’t we just be ourselves?” he’d asked her once in frustration, after her character remained unmoved by his advances.

She’d put her hand on his cheek. “Every day a new adventure, right?” she’d said, with that smile of hers.

*

“Fitz.”

Trix—no, sorry, Tricia, she of the midriff-showing tank tops and extra short shorts—watched Fitz talking to a couple members of the band called Dingo’s KidneysII. His guitar was strapped over his back, his hair was desperately in need of a cut—not that he’d let her talk him into that—and all the sun from all the outdoor concerts was doing him good, turning him brown and somehow smoother, brushing over some of his occasional gracelessness.

“Fitz,” she repeated from her spot at the end of the venue building, leaning against the concrete blocks with her arms folded. He was only standing about twenty or thirty feet away. She could have walked up to him, tapped him on the shoulder, taken his arm, given him a snog. She could have done all sorts of things to demand his attention. She just didn’t have the energy for it this evening.

He was still deep in conversation. Arguing the finer points of the key change after a bridge in a song Fitz had written that the band was playing, probably; when he found fellow musicians, Fitz tended to cling like a drowning man to a raft. The Doctor had mentioned Hitchemus once or twice; she was sort of glad she hadn’t known him then as he probably would have been impossible. He was impossible enough now.

“_Fitz_.”

“Just a minute, babe.” Fitz barely even glanced over his shoulder before turning back to the drummer and lead singer.

Trix—_Tricia_—narrowed her eyes. She hated being called “babe.” Tricia might not mind, but Trix really didn’t like it a bit. And Fitz normally wouldn’t have been caught dead calling her that, but right now he was Fitz Fortune, and he was playing his part just a little too well.

A couple minutes later, he waved the other two guys off and finally turned to join Trix. “Sorry,” he said in an undertone, taking her hand. “Sorry, sorry, I just needed…”

“Yeah,” she said, trying to give him a smile, mostly for Tricia’s benefit because Tricia was in some ways more forgiving than Trix. “I know.”

“Anyway, the Doctor’s almost cracked it, hasn’t he?” he went on as they walked around the side of the venue toward the parking lot. “He’ll be meeting with the Terrible Zodin tonight—still the most ridiculous name for an alien I’ve ever heard, by the way—and then that’s everything sorted, villain of the piece foiled, good guys in the clear, off to grand new adventures. Right?”

“Right,” Trix said, looking at Fitz’s too-long hair. He’d enjoyed this gig, getting to play undercover at being a touring musician. He’d been good at it, though he wasn’t really cut out for all these outdoor concerts; he was best in low-key pubs and bars, working the intimate audiences. The Americans all loved him, though; the accent, he liked to tell Tricia modestly, and usually she’d follow her cue and fawn all over him with her own guaranteed-perfect straight-out-of-Chicago vowels and dropped consonants.

“You alright?” Fitz looked at her in concern, squeezed her hand. “You look tired.”

“I’m fine,” Trix said. She reached up to finger his hair, hesitated, dropped her hand. Tricia would never have failed to follow an impulse; Trix would never have been so indecisive. She wondered who she was right now, if she wasn’t either of them.

Fitz had been playing his part a little too well, and Trix’s heart just wasn’t in hers these days.

*

“You two know what to do, right?” The Doctor looked between his companions. “Distract everyone so I can go in and—”

“Nick the alien device that’s making everyone lose their money and will destroy this corner of the galaxy’s economy in two months, yeah, we got it,” Fitz finished for him, fiddling with his left cufflink, trying to straighten it. Trix looked bored. Again.

The trio stood in the lobby to the fabulously glitzy hotel on a space station orbiting the planet Tersus IV. Dignitaries, politicians, business people—tourists couldn’t even get through the front doors of this place, not unless they were the incredibly wealthy kind—all strolled, rolled, and on occasion bounced past them, in and out of the lifts, casinos, restaurants, and shops. Humans and Draconians and Cheem and Alpha Centauris and Ice Warriors and other races, all mingling together and trying to outdo each other in conspicuous consumption. All right up Trix’s alley. And Fitz’s, probably.

“That is a gross simplification of the problem,” the Doctor said, “but close enough. Are you both ready?”

“Of course,” Trix said, not sound particularly interested in the conversation. “I was born ready, isn’t that my line?”

“I don’t know,” the Doctor gave her a close look, “you tell me.”

She looked back at him, a little annoyed, though Fitz wondered if it was more directed at herself than at the Time Lord; rarely was she so transparent. “We shouldn’t be seen standing here chatting with each other,” she said, dropping her eyes to study her nails, making sure the varnish wasn’t chipped. “It looks suspicious.”

Fitz held out his arm, knowing a cue when he heard one. “Shall we?” he said. He didn’t quite bother meeting her eye.

“Oh, let’s,” she said, deadpan, and took his arm. Fitz tipped his head at the Doctor, the Doctor looked at them both encouragingly—why did he think he needed to do that?—and Trix flicked the folds of her yellow-gold skirt into place.

She and Fitz strutted into the casino. They had done this sort of thing often enough that they didn’t even have to talk about what roles to play beforehand, or how to play them; it had all become very Slot A into Tab B, and Fitz—Fitz wondered if he wasn’t becoming a bit bored himself.

He looked around, trying to spot a likely table, and his attention was immediately distracted by a beautiful woman in an absolutely amazing dress. He couldn’t stop staring. “We could change the plot, if you liked,” he heard Trix say lightly, and he saw her turn to smile back at a particularly dashing young Sebacean who had given her the onceover. He thought about feeling jealous, wondered at himself that he didn’t particularly. “Violent altercation between husband and wife-slash-lovers?”

“Sorry?” Fitz was still mostly distracted by the skirts—there was another woman, in an almost exactly identical dress only in a violent shade of turquoise and seriously, how did they do that?

“If you keep looking at those women, I _will_ have to throw a glass of water at you,” she said sweetly.

He felt his skin flush with embarrassment and managed to pull his attention away so that he could look at the beautiful woman on his arm. “Sorry,” he said, “I was just trying to figure out how the hell her dress stayed up like that. She must have some kind of anti-gravity device thingy.”

“Are you absolutely sure she’s a she?”

“There’s no need to be rude.”

“There’s no need to be prejudiced by your own twentieth-century cultural norms.” She pulled out the reasonable voice she _knew_ he hated the most because it made him feel like an idiot.

“I’m in a James Bond suit and you’ve got Marilyn Monroe hair,” Fitz said because that tone of voice didn’t work on him anymore, most of the time. “I don’t think we could _be_ any more twentieth-century culturally normal.”

Trix looked over at him and grinned; he could feel that sudden warmth blossoming from her direction, and it was probably the nicest smile she’d given him all day. But he wasn’t looking at her, instead surveying the tables of various games already in progress.

“C’mon,” he said, “I think I see our table. Let’s go wow them with our fabulous gambling abilities, shall we? I’m not really in the mood to have you throw water all over me. Again.”

“You threw wine at me last time.” And that had just been two days ago. Relatively speaking. They’d been playing the angry-couple-out-of-sorts-with-each-other an awful lot lately.

“You deserved it.” As soon as the words came out of his mouth, he regretted them, and he saw Trix bite her lip. But it was too late, and he wasn’t about to apologize as that really would probably end up with wine or something worse all over him. The moment passed, and they strolled up to the less-busy table he’d spotted—a game a bit like craps involving holographic eight-sided dice, and thankfully one that both of them had played before—and prepared to create a very large diversion.

He remembered when every day had been a grand new adventure for them both. Remembered it, and the days when they weren’t just going through the motions, when they were both playing their little hearts out at whatever roles were necessary. But these days, Fitz knew, their hearts just weren’t in it. He wondered who would admit it first.

*

The Doctor popped his head into their room. Trix was sprawled on the bed and Fitz sat in the wicker chair he’d pulled out of somewhere. “Come with me,” the Doctor said to them both with a wide grin.

Trix looked up from her magazine, Fitz from his guitar strumming. “What?” Fitz said. “Have we landed?” Trix asked.

“No, no,” the Doctor shook his head. “Come along and see.” He tripped away, beckoning them to follow.

Fitz and Trix exchanged glances. “What’s he done, finally cleaned the swimming pool?” Fitz asked.

“Fixed the movie theater projector,” was Trix’s suggestion.

They followed the Doctor down the maze of corridors. He refused to tell them where he was taking them, and they lapsed into silence. And eventually he opened a door.

“Look what I found,” he said. Fitz and Trix peeked inside.

“The butterfly room!” Fitz exclaimed and jumped into the room—or rather, onto the grass that sat at the beginning of a gently-sloping hill on what appeared to be a beautifully perfect day. Trix held a hand up to shield her eyes from the light.

“I haven’t found any butterflies,” the Doctor said, following them, “should there be?”

“Oh,” Fitz stumbled to a halt and turned around, looking between the other two people on the hill with him. “Oh. I guess not. That was—maybe this is a different hill.”

The Doctor looked intrigued, or possibly worried. Trix admired a wildflower. Fitz turned back to the hill, facing away from the others.

“I haven’t gone over the other side of the hill yet,” the Doctor said and immediately started traipsing upwards. “Care to come with me?” He didn’t wait for an answer and was soon out of sight.

Trix started following, then looked back when Fitz didn’t join her. “Fitz?” she said. He was still standing at the base of the hill, lost in thought.

“This isn’t working anymore, is it?” he said.

Trix stilled. She looked around the hill—there were other hills, and trees she could see off in the distance, and she had no idea where that stupid sunlight was coming from, or the slight breeze that was playing against her face. The sky was blue, the grass green, and she wondered why the Doctor’s TARDIS would choose to put something so very Earth-like in itself when, from what she hadn’t heard through her excellent abilities at not-listening, the Doctor’s planet looked nothing like this.

“Do you really want to have this conversation here, now?” she said at last. “With the Doctor likely about to pop back over that hill to tell us about the next exciting thing he’s found? Maybe he’ll find your butterflies,” she added and wondered why she did that.

“He won’t,” Fitz said. “This isn’t the same old TARDIS, why should she have a butterfly room now? And you and me, we’re not the same old people, why are we still pretending we are?”

She studied him. She was looking down at him because she was higher up on the hill, and he needed a haircut again, and there were days when she honestly forgot what part she was supposed to be playing. And he knew that.

Of course he did. He was observant, when he wanted to be, and she sometimes thought he was tired of playing his own role.

“That’s it, then?” she said. “Really? Just like that?”

“Isn’t that how this started?” he shrugged. He’d been looking at her, watching her reactions; now he looked away, the same way she had, checking out the vista again. “Just like that?”

Trix wondered if she should get angry. If she should start yelling, or crying, or brush past him so she could find the kitchen and the chocolate ice cream. That was what you were supposed to do when a relationship broke down, wasn’t it? That’s what she’d seen in books and on the telly, what she’d seen friends and acquaintances do.

She’d never done it herself. But then, she’d never really had a relationship break apart. There had been marks, and there had been casual flings with whom she’d broke things off but hadn’t really cared what happened.

She cared this time. And she still didn’t know how she, Trix, felt. Or how to react.

Fitz still wasn’t looking at her. His face was pinched, turned away. She’d let the silence stretch too long, and now she couldn’t break it.

He’d gone through bad break-ups before, but she didn’t really want to ask him what she should do. She turned away, looked up the hill, half-hoping the Doctor would magically appear to distract them, half-hoping he wouldn’t so she’d have time to sort herself out. The breeze was gone, leaving only the warmth from a nonexistent sun.

“I’m sorry,” Fitz said. He sounded worried, and defeated, and uncomfortable. He probably thought she was going to cry, though she only felt hollow, emptied of everything she had ever played or known. “Shit, Trix, I’m sorry. This is going to be miserable, and I probably shouldn’t have said anything except we’d only get more and more miserable, and it’s hard enough when we’re both traveling with the Doctor. Can we make this work?”

Trix looked up the hill. The Doctor didn’t come to her rescue, or whatever the opposite would be. But then, she’d never relied on other people to do her work for her. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. And then she turned around and held out her hand. She couldn’t quite bring herself to smile. Not yet.

“Hi,” she said, her voice steady. “I’m Trix. What’s your name?”

Fitz looked at her warily, and then he took her hand and shook it. “Fitz,” he said.

“Hello, Fitz,” Trix MacMillan said on an impossible hill inside an impossible time and space machine and reminded herself that even days like these could still be an adventure, when you lived the life she did, when you chose to _make_ it an adventure. “Let’s be friends, shall we?”


End file.
